Safety MCU controlCARD and USB serial communication

Karol Szumski

Other Parts Discussed in Thread: HALCOGEN, MOTORWARE, DRV8301

I'm using the TMDXRM48CNCD Hercules™ ARM® Safety MCU controlCARD (CNCD) equipped with XRM48L952ZWTT CPU.

The User Guide for this board mentions that the on-board FTDI chip responsible for USB communication is configured to act as both JTAG and serial connector ( my understanding is that it's possible to use both functions at the same time ). Later it's mentioned that the serial connection on the CPU side is done via internal SCI.

Now my question is two-fold:

1. What should be my SCI port configuration on the CPU to enable CPU-FTDI part of the serial transmission? ( baud rate, etc. )

2. What should be my virtual COM port configuration on the PC to enable FTDI-PC part of the serial transmission? ( the same as on SCI? )

3. ( bonus question ) Are there any tutorials that allow to learn the hardware piece-by-piece? I've tried making a simple application and was overwhelmed with the amount of configuration options available at HALCoGen. ( I've tried doing an even simpler application without HALCoGen, but it turned out to be a bad idea )

over 12 years ago

0 John Hall over 12 years ago

TI__Genius 9015 points

Hello Karol,

I have forwarded your post to one of our experts. They will respond back soon.

0 Haixiao Weng over 12 years ago in reply to John Hall

TI__Genius 13810 points

Go to http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/RM48_CNCD

Looking for "Demo Software", there is a blinking LED and LwIP project that can run on this RM48 Control card using the USB-UART.

From Hardware viewpoint, you need to connect the USA mini-B to your PC usb Port.

PC end: Hyperterminal, 19.2K bps, no parity, two stop bits. (You can adjust it according to the firmware in the MCU, by default, it is 19.2K in the firmware link). No Hyperterminal on Win7, so I copied my old xp's Hyperterminal .exe and .dll to win7 and runs well.

MCU end: Search for sciInit() (called in sys_main.c) to find how to initilize the module.

Regards,

Haixiao

0 Karol Szumski over 12 years ago in reply to Haixiao Weng

Prodigy 170 points

I've already tried that demo and it requires ARM Compiler version 5.1. I'm currently unable to find this compiler version through CCS Install Software feature.

Is the compiler version unimportant and I can manually copy the source files to a new project?

0 Haixiao Weng over 12 years ago in reply to Karol Szumski

TI__Genius 13810 points

Link to ARM compiler 5.1: https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/hercules/int-hercules/f/365/t/258397.aspx

Yes, the compiler version is not important. It is 5.1 only because the default compiler in my PC is 5.1.

Regards,

Haixiao

0 Haixiao Weng over 12 years ago in reply to Haixiao Weng

TI__Genius 13810 points

Haixiao Weng said:

Link to ARM compiler 5.1: https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/hercules/int-hercules/f/365/t/258397.aspx

HW: Sorry. It is not released to public. You can not access this link.

Yes, the compiler version is not important. It is 5.1 only because the default compiler in my PC is 5.1.

HW: I am going to modify it to compiler version 4.95 and you should be able to access it this afternoon.

Regards,

Haixiao

0 Karol Szumski over 12 years ago in reply to Haixiao Weng

Prodigy 170 points

Ah yes, copying the source/header files into a new CCS project did the trick. Now that I have a working example things should be a little easier.

Also I've noticed that the files were generated with an older version of HALCoGen ( 03.01.00 rather than the 03.05.02 which I believe is the current version ). Is there a reason behind this? ( I've noticed that 03.05.02 generates a lot more files when using the project file from this example. It also defines and uses its own types like uint16 rather than uint16_t ( as defined by stdint.h ) )

0 Haixiao Weng over 12 years ago in reply to Karol Szumski

TI__Genius 13810 points

The reason is simple:

In the last year, HalCoGen updated more than 5 times. As you can see, the compatiablity between them is not perfect. I don't want to update all my projects once the HalCoGen is updated. For example, the DRV8301 motorware example is built on 3.0.0 or 3.0.1 HalCoGen. After that, it sticks to this version but fix a few bugs in the code generated by this version.

Regards,

Haixiao

Arm-based microcontrollers

Arm-based microcontrollers forum

Safety MCU controlCARD and USB serial communication